Chapter Five.
The story of Isabel.
“O dumb, dumb lips! O crushed, crushed heart!
O grief, past pride, past shame!”
Miss Muloch.
Mother Joan had arrived at the point closing the last chapter, when the sharp ringing of the Abbess’ little bell announced the end of the recreation-time; and convent laws being quite as rigid as those of the Medes and Persians, Philippa was obliged to defer the further gratification of her curiosity. When the next recreation-time came, the blind nun resumed her narrative.
“When Dame Isabelle was lodged at her ease, for she saw first to that, she ordered her prisoners to be brought before the Prince her son. She had the decency not to sit as judge herself; but, in outrage of all womanliness, she sat herself in the court, near the Prince’s seat. She would have sat in the seat rather than have missed her end. The Prince was wholly governed by his mother; he knew not her true character; and he was but a lad of fourteen years. So, when the prisoners were brought forth, the tigress rose up in her place, and spake openly to the assembled barons (a shameful thing for a woman to do!) that she and her son would see that law and justice were rendered to them, according to their deeds. She! That was the barons’ place, not hers. She should have kept to her distaff.
“Then said my grandfather, bowing his white head, ‘Ah, Dame! God grant us an upright judge, and a just sentence; and that if we cannot have it in this world, we may find it in another.’
“The charges laid against them were then read by the Marshal; and the barons gave sentence—of course as Dame Isabelle wished. The Lord of Arundel and Surrey, the premier Earl of England, (see Note 1), and the aged white-haired Earl of Winchester, (see Note 2), were doomed to the death of traitors.
“Saint Denis’ Day—child, it gives me a shudder to name it! We were within the castle, and they set up the gibbet before our eyes. Before the eyes of the son of the one man, the wife and son of the other! I remember catching up Isabel, and running with her into an inner chamber—any whither to be out of sight of that awful thing. I remember, too, that the Lady of Arundel, having seen all she could bear, fainted away on the rushes, and I laid her gently down, and nursed her back into life. But when she came to herself, she cried—‘Is it all over? O cruel Joan, to have made me live! I might have died with my lord.’ At last it was all over: over—for that time. And God had taken no notice. He had not opened the heavens and thundered down His great ire. I suppose that must have been on account of some high festival they had in Heaven in honour of Saint Denis, and God was too busy, listening to the angels, to have any time for us.
“But that night, ere the dawn, my father softly entered the chamber where we maidens slept. He had been closeted half the night with the King, taking counsel how to escape the cruel jaws of the tigress; and now he roused us, and bade us farewell. He and the King would set forth in a little boat, and endeavour to reach Wales. They thought us, however, safer in the castle. We watched them embark in the grey dawn, ere men were well astir; and they rowed off toward Wales. Would God they had stayed where they were!—but God had not ended the festival of Saint Denis.
“Twelve days that little boat rode the silver Severn; beaten back, beaten back at every tide, the waves rough, and the wind contrary. And at length Sir Henry Beaumont, the devil whispering to him who were in the boat, set forth in pursuit. (See Note 3.)